Kelsey Parker opened up on celebrating Father’s Day after Tom Parker’s death (Picture: @being_kelsey)
Tom Parker’s widow Kelsey has opened up on her family’s grief celebrating their second Father’s Day since his death.
The Wanted singer was aged 33 when he died in March 2022 following a two-year battle with brain cancer, having been first being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour in October 2020.
Since then, Kelsey, 32, has been raising awareness about the stages of grief through her ITV documentary, Life After Tom, while also raising their two children; daughter Aurelia, three, and son Bodhi, two.
Last month, celebrating Father’s Day, Kelsey honoured her late husband’s memory by organising a legendary football match, with the likes of Ryan Thomas, Jake Quickenden, Luca Bish, Harry Judd, Ben Cohen, and Thomas Skinner taking to the field at Bromley FC, Parker’s favourite football club.
She’s now spoken about how difficult that day was for her children, saying: ‘It was tough in the morning when we woke up. The kids had made cards at nursery for Tom, which they make for their daddy, then we went and put them on his bench.
‘It is just tough, and it’s just relentless – it is every day. This morning she said to me: “I miss my dad.” I say, we all miss daddy too. What else do I say? It’s so hard.
Parked died aged 33 from an inoperable brain tumour (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Parker had two young children with Kelsey (Picture: @being_kelsey)
‘Of course we all miss him every single day – there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about Tom or talk about Tom.’
Kelsey continued to The Mirror: ‘For me, celebrating father’s day, it’s for my children – it’s all for my children, so they can celebrate Tom and that he didn’t die in vain. So we can do something good from a rubbish situation.’
Kelsey recently opened up to Metro.co.uk about her struggle with grief and how she found it difficult to adjust to being a widow.
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Kelsey held a football match in honour of Parker (Picture: SplashNews.com)
She explained: ‘Even when Tom first died, I felt like I had to wear black, and go out and have a veil across my face, and be this mourning widow. But life’s not like that now.
‘We’re so open, we talk about depression, we talk about anxiety.
‘We talk about all this stuff. But no one is talking about grief and I feel [the series] has given us an opportunity to talk about it and say, “you know what, this is what grief actually looks like.” And it’s not about wearing black – I mean, Ashley is wearing denim!’
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‘There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about Tom or talk about Tom.’